of Sisters and Fires
by madame.alexandra
Summary: Tony and Ziva have pizza, Magnum, P.I., and a talk. Tiva-ish tag to "Rekindled".


_A/N: What is this? a Tiva fic from me? And-what!shock! it's not even one that's Tiva but really basically Jibbs (which is how I roll usually, yo). _

_This is a tag to 'Rekindled'. I'll throw it in among what I'm sure is a plethora of other fics that tag that episode. I wouldn't know; I don't read Tiva, and I rarely write it. _

* * *

Tony DiNozzo put on a cocky grin as he swung open his apartment door suavely, but he knew as well as the Israeli-American standing in front of him that it was a half-hearted grin; a grin that was a mere shadow of his usual tingly, All-American, playboy smirk.

He looked at her for a minute, still doggedly plastering the attempt at normalcy on his face, and reached up to idly scratch the back of his head, _his_ eyes flicking quickly away from _her_ expressive, probing eyes in search of something else to focus on while he sort of blew her off and, well, lied.

"Oh, hey, Ziva," he said breezily, trying to sound as casual-blase as usual. "Not really in the mood for movie night," he shrugged, and gave her a silly, awkward little wave as he started to shut the door on her.

Deftly, she wedged the extra-large pizza box she was holding between the door and the doorframe, refusing to let him shut her out. Calmly, she smiled at him and nodded, a sly, knowing glint in her eye.

"I did not think you would be," she said matter-of-factly. "Therefore, I decided we would watch season two of _Magnum_."

She wriggled a little, using the brunt of her considerable, ninja-trained strength, and slipped effortlessly into his apartment. He grumbled and shut the door behind her, turning, with his hand still behind his head. He tugged at the hair at the nape of his neck. He watched her situate the pizza box on his cluttered coffee table and begin fooling with his entertainment center.

"Uh, hey there, Probie David, how is _Magnum_ different from movie night?" he demanded.

"As you have told me many times, Tony, _Magnum_ is television, not film," she turned around and raised a dark brow at him, flipping his television on and to the correct input. "Yes?"

He glared at her a little, but he couldn't help but relax and let a genuine, though slightly bummed, smile shine through. It touched his eyes and she was momentarily satisfied; she knew the arson case had hit him hard. His retelling of the story was enough to tug at the heartstrings she was so unused to paying attention to. She was trying to get better at heeding her emotions, and thus she thought perhaps he should, too.

"Well?" she prompted, folding her arms and tapping her elbow with the remote expectantly. "I cannot eat this whole pizza by myself."

Tony prowled forward and vaulted over the back of his sofa, settling down with greedy hands in front of the pizza.

'Movie Night' had been an on-again, off-again thing since _ages_ ago when Gibbs had abandoned them for his damn margarita safari. There were periods of time when it was an uninterrupted weekly tradition for DiNozzo to pick a film and use it to educate Ziva in American cinema, tradition, and colloquialism, and then there were times when their very relationship was so fractured that they didn't see each other outside of work for months.

Like after Jenny had died. Like after Michael. Like…after Somalia, when they'd walked on eggshells for too long.

And now, after Ray had been clipped from the picture, and the bonds of their partnership were getting blurry somewhere between the lines of _'I got your back, man'_ and _'I want to kiss you until I can't breathe anymore'_, they resumed _movie night_.

DiNozzo shoved half a piece of pizza in his mouth, probably to keep from having to talk.

But she didn't start the television show; she sat quietly, thoughtfully, next to him.

Sometimes, movie night was just movies and pizza and teasing each other and practicing martial arts technique. Sometimes it was a stress relief, experimentation in casual sex. Sometimes it was something intangible and intimately different altogether. It was something that, if they talked about it, would probably lose its magic.

"Tony," Ziva said thoughtfully, tilting her head.

"Ziva," he responded in the same tone, cocking his own head. "Tom Selleck is waiting."

"Tali died in a fire."

DiNozzo slowly stopped chewing, alarm bells going off in his head. His brow furrowed; he knew the name, but for a moment he just couldn't place it—his head was too full of Jason's sister's desperate screams for help. So he just fumbled a little and looked at her curiously and asked:

"Who?"

"My little sister," she said quietly. "Tali. She died in a fire."

He swallowed heavily. Ziva never talked about Tali. She had mentioned her once or twice—almost on accident, he felt—but the only time he remembered truly hearing about Tali David was when he had first _met_ Ziva.

"When she was sixteen," he remembered slowly. "A suicide bombing."

"It was a refugee hospital in Gaza," Ziva said steadily.

"Oh," Tony said dumbly.

He didn't know what else to say.

Ziva pushed a lock of dark hair behind her ears and looked at him, her brown, wise eyes boring into his with some sort of meaning; she was trying to help, didn't he understand?

"No on tried to save her," Ziva said softly. "It wasn't their job, the people who watched the hospital burn," she admitted, shrugging. "But not one of them ran into a burning building to help."

"So?" Tony asked edgily.

"So," Ziva repeated firmly, her eyes narrowing. "You did. You ran into the flames."

He frowned a little, still looking at her. It almost seemed to mean more when she said it, when she talked about Tali. He understood what she was trying to say. It was like the stupid fable of the kid throwing starfish back into the ocean: he couldn't save all of them, but he could make a difference to _one of them_.

In that same nervous way, he reached up to rub the nape of his neck, flicking his eyes away again.

"Yeah, okay, I get it," he muttered, trying to blow it all off. "I shouldn't beat myself up."

"No."

"Crazy ninja chick," he said, rolling his eyes. "Barging into my apartment, saying wise things—did you bring some yogurt and garlic with you, as part of your life lessons, or were you plannin' on spouting off some nonsense Hebrew idiom—"

Ziva elbowed him sharply in the side, shaking her head with a smirk of amusement.

"Tony," she said earnestly. "It is our job to run into the fire," she told him. "It is also our job to come out alive."

Right; so they could be there to put out the next fire. That's the life they'd signed up for.

"Things won't ever stop burning," Tony said with a small shrug.

"Not while man fights fire with flames," she answered simply.

She leaned back; putting her feet up on his coffee table even though she knew it irritated him. He leaned back with a piece of pizza in his hands and then turned to her wriggling his eyebrows, waving it in her face. She gnashed her teeth playfully and bit off a slice, knocking his hand away and kissing him obnoxiously with a mouthful.

He broke away laughing.

"What was that, Agent Dah-vid?" he drawled, giving her a real honest-to-god, Tony DiNozzo, Jr. cocky smirk.

She popped her eyebrows up and did that pucker thing with her lips that was so sexy.

"A little taste of fire," she said in a sultry voice.

Tony snorted, suddenly feeling much better.

"Fire ain't all that bad," he said coolly, handing her their half-eaten slice of pizza. She elbowed him again, and shoved his thighs with hers, turning on the well-loved _Magnum, P.I. _DVD.

So, it was going to be one of those tangibly intimate, teasing, casually sexy, all-of-the-above kind of _movie nights_.

* * *

_I like Tiva, but I like the banter and the subtlety and the fun. I do not get why it has to be a big spectacle, when I think it's perfectly natural if it's done in a very under the radar, classy manner._

_-Alexandra, resident Jibbs shipper. _


End file.
